How often is there a last-minute change of plans about a Mystery Villain's identity?

[Lorendiac]

I'm posting this on here because it's not just focused on the fine points of Marvel continuity; nor DC continuity; I'll be happy to accept answers about any relevant story published by any company under the sun!

There's a sequence of events which has happened many times in superhero comic books.

1. Mystery Villain pops up and starts bedeviling the hero of the series. (Or the heroes, plural, if it's a team title, such as "X-Men" or "Teen Titans.") Sometimes he's mentioned as existing offstage, and having people intimidated, for quite some time before we ever get a good look at Mystery Villain himself. When we first do, he's usually wearing a mask (or helmet, or hooded robe that keeps his face in shadow, or anything that serves the purpose of concealing his "true identity").

2. The hero of the book is wondering, probably for several issues as the suspense builds: "Who is this guy who's making my life so difficult? Will he turn out to be one of my old enemies with a new paint job, staging a big comeback? Or is it just some jerk I never heard of before?"

(In a minor variation, sometimes the hero doesn't seem to give much thought to the possibility of "did I ever meet this guy before, under a different name?", but the veteran readers of that hero's continuity are keenly aware that this might be the case, and begin placing side bets, writing in their guesses to the title's letter column, et cetera, in an effort to see if they can anticipate the writer's revelations.)

3. Eventually we have the moment of truth; the Big Reveal! Mystery Villain takes his mask off, or it is forcibly removed, or sometimes he keeps his mask on, but says something which (either deliberately or accidentally) clues in the hero to Mystery Villain's true identity. (As in: "Gasp! Only my long-lost twin brother could possibly remember that little secret we shared when we were ten years old!")

Question: Do you remember any interesting cases where it later leaked out that the Big Reveal did not go along the lines which the writer was originally planning when he had "Mystery Villain" debut in a previous issue?

Perhaps the writer spontaneously changed his mind, or an editor ordered him to change his mind, or the writer who introduced Mystery Villain had already been replaced by someone else, and the new writer simply had his own ideas about the most dramatic way to go with the Big Reveal, even if the editor scarcely cared about the guy's "true identity" one way or the other?

I'll mention one example to start the ball rolling. It is generally agreed that in 1991, in the "Armageddon 2001" event in which the premise was "ten years from now, a veteran superhero will go rogue and exterminate his rival super-powered beings and start calling himself Monarch, the new ruler of the entire world," the Original Plan was that the Big Reveal would be . . . "Monarch is Captain Atom!"

Then that plan was hastily changed before the second "bookend" of the event went to press. (That was "Armageddon 2001 #2," following on the heels of a whole bunch of annuals which showed the new character Waverider examining "visions of possible futures for these heroes, ten years in the future." One story says that the identity of Monarch was changed to Hawk (Hank Hall of "Hawk & Dove") because word had leaked out regarding the intended corruption of Captain Atom, and someone at DC wanted to make sure the fans would still be shocked and surprised by what actually happened in the final scenes of the event. I've also seen at least one other rumor about what contributed to the decision to switch things around at the last minute, but the point is that it's generally agreed that yes, the original plans for the Big Reveal were, in fact, discarded and replaced with something else!

Follow-Up Question: Do you remember any interesting cases where it later leaked out that there had not been any Secret Plan for the Big Reveal from the very beginning; instead, the decision to make Mystery Villain be a certain person under the mask (maybe an old-timer who'd been in continuity for years; maybe someone who only debuted in his "civilian identity" during the same story arc; maybe a stranger whose face the hero, and his fans, had never seen before) was Sheer Improvisation after the mysterious build-up had been done without any long-term game plan for where it would all end up?

I ask this because I remember reading that in the Golden Age 25-part serial about the Monster Society of Evil (in the "Captain Marvel Adventures" comic book), the early chapters had Captain Marvel repeatedly fighting the minions of an unseen criminal mastermind who issued marching orders over the radio and was simply known as . . . "Mister Mind." At first, nobody had a clue what he looked like -- and that included Otto Binder and C.C. Beck, the guys who were cranking out each installment for Fawcett!

The story goes that when the time came for the Big Red Cheese to confront his brilliant adversary face-to-face, the creative team said to each other: "We need to make him something really surprising. What's the unlikeliest thing Mister Mind could be? How about . . . a little green worm?" (I think it's safe to say that none of their readers had seen that one coming!)

P.S. I was about to post this when it occurred to me that I should mention another possibility: Sometimes Mystery Villain is introduced dramatically, perhaps with strong hints that he is somehow connected to a hero's previous adventures and still harboring a grudge about it . . . and then we never find out who the heck he really is! For instance, there was a time when Mark Waid was writing "Justice League Task Force" in the 1990s, and he devoted one page to showing a mysterious villain (in an armored suit) who called himself "The Osprey" and was plotting to do terrible things to the JLTF. His thought balloons indicated he particularly had a grudge against The Martian Manhunter (a member of the Task Force at that time).

Then Waid was replaced on the title, and nobody bothered to explore that plotline any further. To the best of my knowledge: Even today, two decades later, we have never seen or heard any further news of The Osprey. So who knows what his exact reasons were for bearing such a terrible grudge against J'onn J'onnz and anyone associated with him? (Just as an amusing possibility: If he's so obsessive-compulsive that he's still working on fine-tuning his Vengeance Plan before he puts the first stages into action, he ought to have it developed into something incredibly elaborate by now!)

[marshal99]

I think the most obvious one was the identity of monarch in the armageddon 2001 event , the whole event hinges on the fact that a hero was going to turn and he was going to kill everyone else and take over the world.



And the funny thing was , Captain Atom did become monarch a couple of times over the years after that event. From extreme justice to Battle for Blüdhaven , it's like the bad idea that keeps resurfacing.